Polling and Chat in the Foreign Language Classroom, higher ed

I'm always looking for ways to improve teaching and enhance learning, especially through technology. Recently, I used chat and polling in the classroom. That experiment resulted in a conference paper, presented at the international conference ICT for Language Learning, Nov 2011, Florence, Italy. These slides are from the conference.

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The traditional classroom What are you thinking? Did you understand? WHAT did you understand? What about YOU? And you?

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The traditional classroom If students wrote their answers in a chat, I would be able to access everyone’s understanding…

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Communication and participationHrastinski 2007

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Communication and participationHrastinski 2007 Students were more motivated to participate in chat discussions because of direct response.

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Chat in education administrative information rather than supporting cognitive aspects of learning communication in FL with native speakers and other learners students are often more focused, thoughtful and honest in discussions online than F2F– even if in the same room! The Twitter experiment – Twitter in the classroom to get students involved in discussion

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Polling and chat in the classroom – apedagogical experimentAimspromote wider student participationtap into everyone’s understanding in order toprovide feedback where it is needed the most

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Adobe Connect Pro (ACP)A web-conferencing solution where you can ◦ communicate through audio, video and chat ◦ show power point presentations ◦ share your screen, whiteboard and files ◦ create interactive quizzes ◦ let students collaborate in small groups ◦ record the meeting and distribute the URL through e-mail or on your LMS ◦ etc… etc…

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An example of ACPadd functionality requires Flash playerthrough pods +internet connection pods may be moved and resized app for iphone and android switch between different layouts (”rooms”)

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Polling in ACP Which of these sentences contain an agreement error? Check all that apply!

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Chat in ACP

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Teacher experience no technical problems participation was remarkably wide throughout reduced waiting time led to active participation open channel between teacher and students informal and friendly atmosphere

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What did the students think? fun modern worked well efficient use of class time we liked the star slightly chaotic when everyone started to correct themselves

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Challenges Shifting between written and oral communication. Chat is informal. This will affect the atmosphere in the classroom. Managing large chunks of text in the chat. Traditional computer rooms are not ideal for face- to-face discussion.

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In conclusion Using polling and chat in the classroom creates a blend of oral and written interaction that caters to different learning styles while promoting wide student participation. Chat, in particular, has the potential to build a bridge between teacher assumptions and student understanding.